Late on Friday afternoon, Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State for Housing, tweeted https://twitter.com/robertjenrick/status/1268937937300922368?s=21 (Update - more on the announcement here) I understand the details are as follows. PD 51Z will be...
All the blog posts, most recent first
Reasons to be cheerless, part 3
Gil v London Borough of Camden (2020) EWHC 735 (QB) This was an application for permission to appeal the dismissal of a s.204 appeal for being out of time. (It was either one or two days out of time, depending). The application was dismissed...
Delays and duties and human rights
Idolo, R (on the application of) v London Borough of Bromley (2020) EWHC 860 (Admin) I'm a bit late to this one (ironically, as it turns out), it has been an open browser tab for ages, sorry. It is a judicial review on the overlap of Care Act 2014...
Shine on you crazy Dymond*
Croydon London Borough Council v Kalonga (2020) EWHC 1353 (QB) Flexible tenancies. We always said they were a bad idea. This was a determination of a possession claim brought by Croydon LBC against Ms Kalonga, who had a five year term flexible...
Flaming June
A couple of notes for the first of June. (It looks lovely out there, but if 6 socially distanced people from separate households turn up in my block's communal gardens I will Not Be Happy). The Tenant Fees Act 2019 as of 1 June 2020 applies to all...
The teenage years
Astonishingly, Nearly Legal is at its 14th birthday. The blog started in June 2006. That is 14 years I've spent on this site, man woman and child. Forgive me if in these fevered and increasingly hallucinatory times, I have a bit of a self indulgent...
When 52 is also 51 because 55.
London Borough of Hackney v Okoro (2020) EWCA Civ 681 An appeal to the Court of Appeal on the issue of whether appeals of possession orders (or indeed appeals from Part 55 possession proceedings generally) are caught by the Practice Direction 51Z...
What to do, what to do, what to do?
The Housing, Communities and Local Government Commons Select Committee has published an interim report on protecting rough sleepers and renters through the Coronavirus pandemic. The key recommendations are: i) on rough sleeping and homelessness,...
Homelessness in Wales
I am quite late covering this, but on 28 April 2020, the Welsh Government issued new statutory guidance on homelessness (Part 2, Housing (Wales) Act 2014) and coronavirus. It is excellent. Not just because it is statutory guidance (cf the seemingly...
Children getting older as ‘unnatural increase’ for overcrowding
Flores, R (on the application of) v London Borough of Southwark (2020) EWHC 1279 (Admin) This was a judicial review of Southwark's allocation decision on the priority to be given to a family in accommodation which had become statutorily...
This is how it ends, not with a bang but a viewing.
If I am honest, this is not how I anticipated the apocalypse to look. The streets deserted apart from roving estate agents, dead eyes above the mask, looking for someone, anyone, to force into a viewing in an enclosed space. But that is what the...
Not Arkin any more
Arkin v Marshall (2020) EWCA Civ 620 This is the Court of Appeal judgment in the appellant's challenge to the lawfulness, extent and effect of the stay of Part 55 possession proceedings until 25 June 2020 under Practice Direction 51Z. The short...